Voltage (V) and milliamp-hours are used to rate laptop batteries (mAh). Voltage
is the rate at which the battery gives up its energy and Milliamp-hours Shows how much power the battery has. The number of milliamp-hours tells you how long the battery will last. A battery with a high Milliamp-hour rating will last longer than one with a low Milliamp-hour rating.
The same laptop can use batteries with different Milliamp-hour ratings as long as the voltage rating is the same. The voltage rating has to be the same as the original battery or what the computer's manual says is best. Using a battery with a different voltage setting can do a lot of damage to the laptop. Most compatible or replacement batteries have higher power ratings than the batteries made by the original company. This won't hurt your laptop; in fact, it just means that these batteries often last longer than the ones that came with the laptop. Ask people who know,
Power up with replacement laptop batteries that are compatible.
The amount of time a laptop battery will last depends on the applications being used (for example, games with a lot of graphics), the number of times something is saved or retrieved from the hard drive and/or CD Rom drive, the memory of the laptop, and the chemistry and capacity of the battery. A realistic average for a battery's run time is between 1.5 and 3 hours. Using the laptop with things like a wireless adapter also drains the battery a lot.
In normal use, a battery will last between 500 and 900 cycles of being charged and then being drained. For the average user, this means that the battery will last between 1.5 and 3 years. As the rechargeable battery starts to wear out, the amount of time it can be used starts to go down.
